


A Beautiful Friendship

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-17
Updated: 2008-12-17
Packaged: 2019-06-15 13:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15413580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: Giles seeks a quiet drink, but runs into Spike instead.





	A Beautiful Friendship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antennapedia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antennapedia/gifts).



> There is oblique mention of Spike/Buffy, I hope you don't mind, I mean, it isn't "shippy" in any way, but I pictured this as sort of early season 6. Before Giles left, though.

Giles thought that the seedy bar by the freeway on-ramp was his best bet for a good, anonymous drinking binge. The place was hard to get to and boasted no attractions beyond poor lighting and a sticky concrete floor, so he assumed no one who knew him would venture to it.

“Bitch thinks she can…” Spike stopped, the door slamming the wall behind him.

Giles glanced up at the familiar voice.

“… by which I mean that female dog,” Spike amended, badly, and dropped into a bar stool a safe distance away. “Thinks she can… follow me home. Oi! Beer!” he turned his ire on the baretender, who didn’t look particularly threatened as he walked over and waited, with an expression a Fyarl would quail at, to hear what type of beer, exactly.

Giles raised his glass to his lips to cover his smile. “I know you think I never leave my ivory tower, but I have heard Buffy called a bitch before.”

He was rewarded with a slight widening of Spike’s eyes and an, “Oh.”

Spike moved one seat closer when he accepted his glass from the bartender. “So what’s got _you_ on the outs with the slayer?”

“Nothing I’d care to share with you.”

Spike nodded and took a long, philosophical pull on his ale. “Beer here is shit,” he said, when he came up for air. The bartender glared from the other end of the bar where he was wiping down glasses with a less than sanitary looking cloth. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, the Bronze is worse, but if you want to get a decent beer in this town you have to go down near the college and pay like it was sodding Champaign.”

“I don’t care about the relative merits of American beers,” Giles said.

Spike narrowed his eyes. “And all this time I thought you were British.”

Giles rolled his eyes at the mock disdain. He could only credit the pleasant buzz he had that he felt amused rather than irritated. “And what, pray tell, has you ‘on the outs’ with Buffy tonight?”

He blustered and stammered a bit, before coughing out, “You know, the usual – I’m evil. She fights evil. We fight.”

Thereby an awkward silence followed, punctuated by Giles’ fingertips tapping the bar and Spike tapping his foot on the rail – and,well, fidgeting every way a body could fidget, like his very bones itched.

Giles wondered, idly, if that were possible. Not much was known about the interior physiology of a vampire – where the blood went so new blood had to be gotten. Perhaps it dried up in the very veins. It would explain a lot.

Spike finished off his glass. “Right,” he said, turned, and threw it into the wall, where it shattered with a wet sound, sending the plastic Miller Lite sign swinging. “That’s it, we’re off.”

Giles stared down at the hand gathering up a fistful of his jacket sleeve. “We’re what?”

“Pretty obvious the booze isn’t working, Rupes. I got an itch to rip into something nasty. Are you coming or are you going to dick about in the pub all night?”

Giles blinked a few times and was surprised to hear himself say, “All right.”

Spike led the way in a panther-like strut, shoulders moving to clear imagined brush as they crossed the near deserted streets of a Sunnydale night.

“Just curious, Spike. Is there any particular reason you needed to bring me along?”

Spike only turned a moment, eyebrow raised as though to say “You’re joking.”

“Come on,” he picked up the pace into a jog, “I smell something sulpherous and big. Either we have a steel mill growing in Shady Rest, or there’s a nest of Grabblers feeling peckish.”

Grabblers. Oh dear. Giles felt about himself. Holy water: check, wooden stake: check, something that would kill a Grabbler: no.

Giles went through what information he could remember about how to kill the beasts. Decapitation, dissolution in any basic solution, the Rod of Gur…

A howl rang out as Spike jump-kicked a very large Grabbler male in the face. The filthy, grayish thing dropped the bone it was chewing on and swatted at him like an oversized cat annoyed by a fly.

Which was all well and good, but there were four others and they were now looking at him like he was somehow to blame for the existence of bloodthirsty blonde vampires.

Always being the intelligent sort, Giles ran. He ran back and forth through tombstones and ornamental trees until he saw a shed with a shovel laying next to it. This he picked up, turned and brought down hard on the head of the grey, shambling monster moving after him with preternatural speed.

It wasn’t a sharpened shovel – that would have been convenient, but he shoved it toward the thing’s neck anyway, pushing it back.

Suddenly something black and leather was around its throat and it fell over. Spike laughed, jumping up on the fallen monster to preen. “See, Rupes? The violence beats the beer in So-Cal. Clears the head.”

And then, thankfully, he was ripped off his proud perch by a long double-jointed arm.

“Foolish… cocky…” Giles wasn’t sure if the words were referring to Spike alone as he gripped his shovel handle with resolve and charged after the idiot vampire.

***

Spike guessed that a little violence would shake loose the watcher’s tongue, but he was stunned into chortling smugly by how well it worked.

Giles punctuated his words with swings of his shovel. “First you’re their guide, the holder of all-important knowledge, but even, uh!, then you’re pathetic, out-of-touch,” Clang! The shovel-blade was permanently disfigured from slamming through demon bones. “Then you’re the bothering old nanny who makes them do their chores!” He slumped against the fallen demon, partially supporting himself with the shovel.

Spike presumed the rant to be over. He licked a bit of blood off his knuckles and found a comfortable perch on a thick family marker. “Slayers,” he said, companionably, and got out a cigarette.

Giles snatched the cigarette from Spike’s lips the minute it was lit.

Spike glared, but Giles just smiled and took a drag, finding his own place to sit on the gentle curve of a stone book. “And you know,” he said, pointing the cigarette, “even that is better than now. Now I’m ‘research guy’, a lesser sort of sidekick to be called upon when those odious books need consulting! Willow is given more regard.”

“Yeah, well, Willow can kick your arse.” Spike straightened, standing before Giles in a posture meant to remind the watcher that Spike was once among the august company of Things That Can Kick Your Arse, one hand out expectantly.

With a sigh, Giles handed over the cigarette. “I don’t know why I’m unburdening myself to a vampire. She just… doesn’t see me. I wonder if she ever did.”

“Slayer sees you.” Spike nudged him aside to join him on the larger tombstone. He took a drag and handed the cigarette back. “She looks up to you. Wants to impress you. Anyone can see that. Pillock.”

Giles fixed a penetrating glare at him and used more force than necessary in resuming the smoke. “Thank you for your insight. Now piss off.”

Spike chuckled. “Come on, Rupes! You’re feeling taken for granted? She grabs me… uh, for a fight,” he coughed. “whenever she needs… I mean wants a… has a need. Yeah. Anyway, point is, I’m always there, aren’t I? Whenever there’s a nasty to beat, but afterwards it’s wam, bam, no-thank-you-Spike!”

Giles said, evenly, as though pointing out a fact to a particularly slow student, “You’re evil.”

“Well, yeah. Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate common courtesy.”

It was Giles’ turn to chuckle, and before he finished, Spike joined in. Their shoulders touched and they smirked at each other.

“Right pair of old hens we are,” Spike said, “moaning because the kids don’t write.”

Giles pitched the nearly finished cigarette into the pile of dead demon and stood. “You might be old enough for that, but I’m not.” He held his hand out to Spike.

Spike looked at the hand like he had no idea what it was. “Not giving you another fag,” he said at last.

Giles rolled his eyes. “It’s a hand, Spike. You put yours in it, I help you up, we go enjoy the rest of this night.”

His fingers were grasped faster than he expected, and two men smiled at each other.

No more needed to be said, but as they passed the cemetery gate, Spike mused, “None of that top-shelf whiskey tonight, Watcher. Doesn’t burn enough.”

“Drink what you want. I'll be having something that doesn't come in gallon jugs.” He tossed the shovel back toward the storage shed it had come from. It hit with a chink, landing not quite where it had leaned before.

Spike put his hand on Giles’ shoulder. “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Giles knocked the hand off, but they both smiled.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is for **antennapedia**
> 
> Who asked for:
> 
> Giles and Spike are in a pub, drinking.  
> They're on the outs with Buffy, bored, restless, and itching for a  
> demon fight. Spike stands up and throws his full glass against the  
> wall and says, "That's it, then. We're off." Gen, slash, wherever that  
> prompt takes you, whenever you want to set it-- it's all good.  
> What you don't like to see: Buffy in a shippy context with either of them.
> 
> Sorry this took so long, short as it is. Muse hasn't been with me, and my stupid right hand is in a brace so it's making typing a CHORE. *insert cussing*


End file.
